Sense of Loss

 At last, I've put a finger

Firmly on a strange feeling

Before now I couldn't identify

When one sees pictures of hieroglyphs

Or tours a grand home from the previous century

Or as now when I carefully sift through

What is left of my parent's long life together.

Or when I see where a railroad track was removed

Or a one room schoolhouse standing in ruin. 

What is this feeling so sad and so dear

It is the profound 'sense of loss.'

I feel we are losing the ability to be simple and free

I feel we are losing our basic survival instincts

To a mountain of plastic nothingness.

Our virtues are tied to commercial holidays

Our emotions milked with well designed ploys

We rely on calculators as we rely on this nothingness

To chart our lives as emptiness drives so many

Out of their minds.

No stability thrives, as security hides 

From the amplified chaos the nothingness breeds

Can one construct from what's left

A life to preserve and use what others would refuse

In solitary satisfaction that these were correct actions

Are these surviving objects futile or essential clues?

-Kelly Voelker